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Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

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Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#21

Post by will_work4tears »

walterbell wrote: post #10
Jemaclus wrote: post #5

Awesome. This is a nail in the coffin for Oyster or whatever that other app was. You can't beat Amazon's selection or prices, and this just makes the Netflix comparison even better. Oof. Sucks for competition, good for my Kindle and my wallet.

Unclear what subset of all Kindle books would be included. http://gigaom.com/2014/07/16/amazon-is-testing-kindle-unlimi... --- No big-5 publisher appears to be participating yet, based on my preliminary glance through the test pages. Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have both made their ebooks available to Scribd and Oyster, but I haven’t yet seen books from those publishers on the Kindle Unlimited page, though I’m…

I don't see "big publishers" either, but I own many of the books listed there (just after a preliminary glance), and I paid as high as 9 - 10 dollars for many of them (and quite a few of the 1.99 - 4.99 books were quite good). I think this service would fit me rather well.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#22

Post by jonnathanson »

frio wrote: post #6

Interesting. I wonder what this implies for authors. Amazon might take a cut currently, but the lion's share ends up with the author -- a royalty based scheme significantly changes the playing field, and I worry that it could be for the worse ( http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353 ). EDIT -- and what it implies for publishers.

It'll definitely be interesting to watch. The article you linked talks about the effects of Spotify on making a living as a musician. Spotify economics are, as you've pointed out, much tougher for authors than for songwriters. Books take a lot longer to create than songs. Also, people listen to the same songs hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of times before getting sick of them. People generally read books once. Maybe a few times, over the course of their entire lives, if they really love the book. You don't get the frequency effect that you do with music consumption. So a fractional royalty, multiplied by a lot of individual readers, each of whom reads the book once, is probably the best outcome for any given book in this case.

If this model takes hold, the thing that may need to change is the book itself. The economics of subscription suggest a shift in incentives away from the years-long creation of 300+ page tomes, and toward serialization or shorter forms. It behooves me, as an author, to have 10 or 20 "books" (or serialized installments) floating around the system each year, casting a wider net, than to bet the farm on one book a year.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#23

Post by r00fus »

frio wrote: post #6

Interesting. I wonder what this implies for authors. Amazon might take a cut currently, but the lion's share ends up with the author -- a royalty based scheme significantly changes the playing field, and I worry that it could be for the worse ( http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353 ). EDIT -- and what it implies for publishers.

I don't imagine this is new territory in terms of licensing for music, but may be for books.

Look at iTunes Match - you pay a monthly fee, what Apple does on the backend is likely royalty payments per song (there may be negotiation with labels as to iTunes match rates).

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#25

Post by cstross »

dublinben wrote: post #16
walterbell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unclear what subset of all Kindle books would be included. http://gigaom.com/2014/07/16/amazon-is-testing-kindle-unlimi... --- No big-5 publisher appears to be participating yet, based on my preliminary glance through the test pages. Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have both made their ebooks available to Scribd and Oyster, but I haven’t yet seen books from those publishers on the Kindle Unlimited page, though I’m…

The publishers are really in the position to kill this. They obviously don't want to support an Amazon-based unlimited book rental service, and no users will join it if they can't read the books they want to.

It really depends ...

How much do people read? Nobody's too sure, but it looks like an extremely long tail distribution -- not just a matter of 80% of the books being read by 20% of the readers, but of 80% being read by maybe 5-10% of the readers.

The $9.99/mo price point will work fine for the major publishers if the readers end up on average reading $9.99 of retail-value ebooks per month, but not too much more, and if AMZN's accounting back-end pays them pro-rata for loans. It's like an all-you-can-eat restaurant buffet; some people will pig out, but most people don't fill themselves to the point of nausea, and it all averages out in the end.

However, I suspect it's no coincidence that this is surfacing at the same time that AMZN are renegotiating their ebook pricing contracts with the big five (starting with the current dust-up with Hachette). It's another form of leverage: Amazon can offer it as a tasty extra -- in effect, a commercial library access channel -- for compliant publishers, but can also threaten to withhold access to the new channel if they won't play ball over discount structures.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#26

Post by jack-r-abbit »

gdilla wrote: post #14

This won't have the major publishing houses titles (beyond those who have agreed to work with Oyster). So no Penguin Random House, the market leader in print and audio. It also remains to be seen if the subscription model can work for books - they take longer to consume than movies or music. So you can imaging slower or busy readers being punished with a subscription unless they make it through 1.5 books per month wh…

On the other side of that, it kind of makes more sense (to me) to buy music and rent (subscribe to) books because music is usually listened to repeatedly while books are usually read once and then not again (or at least not for a long time after the first time).

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#28

Post by cliveowen »

A few weeks ago Jon Evans of TechCrunch said this:

"Despite my techie contempt for their business practices, I really do want traditional publishers to survive, because their employees — unlike, I suspect, Amazon’s — tend to genuinely love books in the same way that I do, and because good editors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s hard to see how they can thrive fighting like this. In the long run their only real hope is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats for books,” if you will.

I’m not sure how successful that will be. Books are not like songs. But it’s hard to see where else their future lies. Never mind the current Amazon vs. Hachette skirmish; that’s just a sideshow. Book publishers essentially conceded their long war with Amazon before it ever began, without even knowing what they were doing." [1]

Looks like he was spot on, and it looks like Amazon won the whole war.

EDIT: It looks like he predicted this almost a year ago in another article:

"With luck we’re entering a world in which readers have access to any and every book for a flat fee; authors get paid depending on how much they’re actually read; publishers remain a vital but decreasingly visible part of the process; physical books are still available via online print-on-demand and niche physical stores; and zillions of CC-licensed books are freely available to readers in the poor world who can’t yet afford books or subscription services. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems to me that that’s a win for absolutely everyone." [2]

And I have to agree, this looks like a big win for everyone.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-wa...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-ou...

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#30

Post by hnha »

dublinben wrote: post #12

Most of these books are available through your local library for free.

Actually I doubt that, 50% are probably automatically generated rubbish that is (luckily) not available in a local library.

But yeah, this is probably just "renting". I doubt you could download them all but I would love to try doing exactly that.

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